


no. and she means it. (this is what it means to be a girl) (this isn't his story)

by kwritten



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/F, Writers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-08 15:22:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14108274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: for the prompt:there's something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls





	1. everything in moderation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [clytemnestras](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/gifts).



_There isn't a right way or a wrong way to be a girl. There's only ever a dangerous way.  
  
 **Teach me** , she begs with eyes limpid and wanting like the heroine of a romance novel and you wonder to yourself if it would be better or worse if you demanded she was on her knees.   
  
The lesson is always the same and you always teach it the wrong way; creating monsters instead of monsters, giving birth to dragons instead of dragons.   
  
Who is she? Only every girl in the world.  
  
Who are you?  
  
Who the fuck cares. _  
  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
 _This reads like a love letter_ , Dawn says, eyes narrowed and stern.  _But not to me._  She burns pages and pages covered in scrawling handwriting as if there was nothing painful in destruction, in tearing down worlds and mountains.   
  
 _It's a novel_ , her lover whispers as her words curl and blacken into soot and dust and disappear.   
  
Tongues on teeth and lips on skin and nothing is forgiven or forgotten.   
  
This is what it's like to be an author, Cassie tells herself (and anyone who will listen).  
  
 _Bored and self-obsessed and sex-crazed?_  Dawn asks, examining her own face in the mirror over one shoulder, hair obstructing her gaze as if even she is afraid of what might be looking back.   
  
 _What's wrong with that?_  (for posterity, she wishes this moment was disdainful, was Keatsian, was anything other than what it was: breathless and pleading).  
  
Nothing. (Neither of them says it out loud.)  
  
(They've learned that words - when audible - are too slippery, intangible, are no longer their own.)  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
 _There is  
A whole (in the universe)  
  
it is filled with the musings of (teenage)   
girls, thick and   
heavy and   
waiting   
for someone to find it (and   
prove them   
  
wrong.)  
  
There is a whole and   
you are standing in   
it._  
  
  
  
*   
  
  
 _This reads like a warning,_  and she is smiling and Cassie can't tell if that's more or less dangerous than anything else Dawn has done lately. She finds poetry suits her better, finds that Dawn burns less verse than she does prose. There's a garbage can full of her own words to prove it. There are scars on Cassie's back and thighs from fingernails and teeth that mean... something. Something words can't find - something words probably shouldn't know.   
  
 _I love it._    
  
It sounds like a warning, her love.   
  
(It's never  _I love you_ , which is probably for the best, Cassie thinks to herself as she bites the inside of Dawn's thigh.  
  
Probably.)  
  
  
  
  
 _Only monsters love monsters,_  she whispers when Cassie pretends to sleep, a pen scratching against a pad of paper she hides under her mattress that Cassie doesn't dare acknowledge.   
  
She wonders if she'll ever be monster enough.  
  
  
(Probably.)


	2. eleven and again (some)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> inspired by all the eleven x max manips out in the tumblr-verse and feeling sad about Dawn never really being 11, but how we all remember Michelle being that age... so yeah...

She remembers turning eleven. 

Being hard around the edges and knobby-of-knees and covered in scabs and having hair that never looked quite right or fell quite right and somehow there was that one strand that was always sticky. She remembers the smell of sweat and grass and dirt and the sting of a fresh scrape on her shin and the feel of blacktop under her bare feet and the way that everything felt like the beginning and the end. 

Looking back, it feels like maybe it was only one day, one day of being ... fresh and possible. Like a girl only so much more of a _girl_ than the world allows. 

Like loud and sticky and denim and flowers with plaid and plaid for no reason at all and hope and dreams and skinny limbs and flesh where maybe there oughtn't be yet and chocolate ice cream until you're sick and lying in the grass tickling your thighs and looking up at the stars like you owned them and could just... reach out and take them out of the sky at will. 

She was never that powerful, very few girls are allowed to be, but she _felt it_ and it was intoxicating. 

She remembers the moment before being a girl was sweet and clean and orderly. 

She remembers being wild for the hell of it, remembers not believing in hell, remembers _being_ for the sake of being in a body that loved pain and dirt and running too quickly down hills of snow and mud. 

There's a single picture from that moment, her hair is tangled and falling out of it's ponytail like it hadn't been brushed in a week, her nails are painted glitter-pink and there's a healing scab running down the entire length of her left thigh, she's sitting cross-legged in purple jean shorts on her bed, hands blurred with motion and a flash of metal in her mouth. 

It isn't a photo, really. It's a moment. 

 

 

 _Did you ever...?_ is a phrase she learns very quickly she should never say. 

_Do you remember...?_ is even worse... leads to answers she's sure no one should ever hear. 

_How were you made?_ while trailing a finger down Dawn's arm is something she only ever, ever thinks very softly to herself. It's not possible for a human being to be so perfect, so soft and hard and beautiful and terrifying... but she's not and so... there's that. 

 

 

 _I wish I had known you then,_ Cassie nods to a photo of the Summers family on their first night in Sunnydale while walking up the stairs, flippantly, unthinkingly, with a softness in her voice she usually is better at hiding. 

In the morning, there's a scrawling tattoo of ancient script across her collarbone and a vague memory of a vanilla ice cream cone falling on her favorite pair of sandals. 

_Stop playing with Sharpies in the middle of the night, freak,_ she teases because she'd rather laugh than be frightened. 

Dawn kisses her collarbone and the tattoo disappears and she's suddenly struck with the fear that she's forgotten something... something about something more than ice cream on her toes and a sticky sandal on a hot summer day. 

_Stop saying stupid things._

Typical.

 

 

There's something about lying in Dawn's arms while a rainstorm wails outside that feels like flying down the street on her bicycle whooping at the top of her lungs felt when she was just a girl. 

There's no such thing as just a girl. Not anymore. 

~~But maybe she's glad she remembers being one... at least...~~


End file.
